Category Archives: this site

If you’re a regular around here, you’ve probably had a slight shock because I’ve had the decorators in (again). I updated the underlying software and while I was at it, applied their latest default theme. I find it a bit overwhelming but there you have it. I’ll be playing around with it and there might come some background images shortly. Leave it with me.

I’ve added two new sites to this domain which are both specialist blogs that I didn’t really feel like building separate domains for. One is Learning to Make Bobbin Lace and the other is Urban Sketching. It is a measure of the software supplied by my very nice hosting company, Blacknight, that so far, this hasn’t caused any problems. Neither of those two sites have much content yet but if you are interested neither in urban sketching nor lacemaking, the chances are you won’t care.

In the meantime, my tech/data blog is still running over at treasalynch.com and the photography blog at livingforlight.org. The latter is probably looking at a full overhaul later when I decide what I want to do with it but for now it’s staying in place. After that, I’m in the process of looking at my digital assets and cleaning them out. I will probably shut down thingsthatstrikeme.org by the end of the year completely so some of the more interesting material will possibly get republished here before I ditch the site altogether.

Winter is approaching and warm drinks are more and more important. For most of my life I lived off Barrys Gold Blend and I will always have a box of it to hand somewhere. But Marco Polo is just the most amazing tea going. It’s a pity that no one sensible sells Mariage Freres tea in Dublin (that I know about) because the delivery charges from France are fairly hefty. Likewise for the Nordqvist tea from Finland. And Kudos to le Palais des Thés who have a shop on Wicklow Street where if you’re really very lucky, they will also have the most amazing ginger bread for sale.

Just fantastic.

The thing is, when you grow up in Ireland, tea is almost a binary experience. Are you Barrys or Lyons? Tea is so much broader than this now and yes,. we have a few decent specialist tea shops around the country now. And there is a bigger selection of tea in the supermarkets (nod to Twining’s Lady Grey by the way – it’s almost on the list).

This is a good thing. There are more varieties of tea available in Ireland now than beer. This is something we may want to consider when wondering about the country’s alcohol problem.